Presidential Biographies | John Adams Administration - Adams and the Judiciary

Adams and the Judiciary

In terms of impact on the future of U.S. government, the appointment in 1800 of Secretary of State John Marshall to chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was one of Adams's most significant presidential actions. Marshall served as chief justice for 34 years and authored one of the Supreme Court's most important decisions, Marbury v. Madison, in 1803 (See also, Thomas Jefferson Administration). In it Marshall staked out a strong role for the federal judiciary: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." To help Americans discern what the law is, Marshall ended the practice whereby each justice wrote his own opinion in every case, and instead encouraged one majority opinion.

Adams also appointed two associate justices to the Supreme Court; Bushrod...